Snow on the Lake

At Lake of the Ozarks today, and tomorrow. It decided to start snowing sometime between 1 AM (About when I went to bed) and 8:45 (When I woke up). Several inches--at least 2, maybe 3. Snow on the lake is kind of haunting--it makes me feel isolated somehow; left alone in a wilderness. Except, of course, that Bri is with me and that a lakeside condominium hardly qualifies as a jungle.

We are here to take in a weekend of so of relative vacation. During the summer, the Lake is usually besieged by an army of people with excessive quantities of alcohol and ludicrously overpowered speedboats, but during wintertime it is as empty as an abandoned hospital--rows and rows of empty boathouses like beds, and at the entrance to every cove a view of the deserted corridor. It's an incredibly peaceful feeling to be present here, today, to watch the snow fall.

Bri has to work, though. It's a vacation, but we can't get everything done that we need to during the week, so I have to answer emails from students and she has to finish research work for her boss. Still, we are here, so life could be a lot worse.

My nephew was born yesterday. Kolby Jaron Eiman, at such and such a length and so and so a weight--if you are reading this, then you probably already know about it, and I don't feel a special need to inform you further of things which you already know. Suffice it to say that he was born, everyone is healthy, and I am one of several happy uncles. Bri will officially be an aunt in August, but she's already acting like one: asking me why we couldn't have gone up and seen him this weekend instead of waiting two weeks. I told her that I asked Beth if she wanted us to, but that we would really have just taken up space that (judging by the photos) Beth and Kolby probably don't need (her room was HUGE! At least it looked that way in the photographs), but of course that isn't a good reason for Aunt Bri, who wants so much to be a good aunt that it makes me smile. Really, Bri always wants to be the best ever at everything, and I think it infuriates her when she's told its impossible. However, seeing as that she's already pretty good with Brayden, I don't think that she has a lot to worry about.

So I started what can charitably be called a blog, but I don't really expect that it will take a hold of me like it took hold of my mother, my aunt, and my sister. Still, maybe every once in a while it will be fun for me to post banal ramblings for the consumption of the universe as a whole. We will see what turns up.